The mischief was now fairly afoot. Personal malice began to work; some of the girls were servants and accused their masters and mistresses, as in the cases of John Proctor and George Jacobs. On the other hand, now that superstition was thoroughly awakened, it ran its usual course of madness, and the most absurd pretexts for accusations were eagerly fastened upon. Susannah Martin, for instance, was accused, and executed, upon the ground that she had walked on a country road without getting her skirts or stockings muddy, and must be a witch to be able to perform such a feat! Even such a man as the Rev. George Burroughs, who had been pastor of the church at Salem for about three years, but had long left there, and in 1692 was living in Maine, was arrested on a charge of witchcraft and taken to Salem to be tried, on the plea that he was, though of small stature, strong enough to lift a barrel of cider or hold a heavy musket out at arm's length. He was named by the "Afflicted Children"; but the fact that while in Salem he had been inimical to the party of Mrs. Ann Putnam makes the real source of the accusation not problematical. He was formally accused by little Ann Putnam, who said that one evening there came to her the apparition of a minister and asked her to write her name in the devil's book; then appeared two women in shrouds, who scolded the first wraith away; then the two women told Ann that they were the ghosts of the first and second wives of Mr. Burroughs, who had murdered them, and one of them showed to the child the gaping wound which had been inflicted upon her. On such testimony as this Mr. Burroughs, a man of high standing and deep learning, was condemned to die.